^ On
a 23 September:2002 On
news that British Energy will get from the British government a 2-month
extension of the 410-million-pound emergency loan that was to expire on
28 September, the American Depositary Receipts of British Energy (BGY),
on the New York Stock Exchange, surge from their previous close of $0.75
to an intraday high of $1.24 and close at $1.20. They had traded as low
as $0.32 on 18 September 2002 following their 09 September 2002 plunge from
the 08 September close of $4.87 to an intraday low of $1.67, which was reported
here. [3~week price chart >]

2002
Houston-based El Paso Corporation, through its pipeline subsidiary, held
back at least 10% of the capacity on its pipeline connecting Southwest gas
fields to California from November 2000 to March 2001, during a period of
high demand and large price increases for natural gas, says Judge Curtis
L. Wagner, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's chief administrative
law judge. He recommended that FERC impose penalties on El Paso for its
actions. California, which complained
to FERC about El Paso in March 2000, wants FERC to order the company to
refund at least $200 million, roughly equivalent to El Paso's profits from
the transactions. The ruling is the latest finding that energy companies
attempted to manipulate power supplies and prices in California.
Many California power plants use natural
gas, and gas prices in California during the winter of 2000-2001 were on
average three times higher than elsewhere in the US. Southern California
Edison, a large investor-owned utility, has said that El Paso's dominance
of the Southern California market added $3.7 billion to energy costs, and
that high natural gas prices added $1 billion to the cost of energy produced
at its gas-fired power plants.
Two subsidiaries of El Paso had a contract to ship up to 1.2 billion cubic
feet of gas a day  nearly 20% of the state's supply  to Southern
California. Gas prices in the region plummeted after the El Paso contract
expired at the end of May 2001. Wagner initially decided there was not sufficient
evidence to show that El Paso withheld pipeline capacity. But FERC asked
him to take a second look based on recommendations from the commission's
staff investigators. He earlier ruled that the subsidiaries violated federal
rules governing the award of gas contracts. On
the New York Stock Exchange, El Paso Corporation's stock (EP) drops from
its previous close of $11.67 and today's intraday high of $12.76 early in
the session, to an intraday low of $6.75 and closes at $7.51. It traded
as high as $46.89 as recently as 21 March 2002, and as $74.50 on 19 February
2001. [5~year price chart >]

2001
Parliamentary elections in Poland. Solidarnosc is completely defeated, failing
to retain even one seat. The recycled Communists of the Democratic Left
Alliance, together with their coalition partner, the Polish Peasants Party,
win 258 of the 460 seats.in the Sejm (lower house), which, on 26 October
2001 votes its approval of the new government of Prime Minister Leszek Miller.1997 Government officials in Argentina announce that phone
rates will be cut in half to encourage use of the Internet.
1993 Personal Communication Services auction
^top^
The Federal Communications Commission announces
a plan to auction off some $10 billion in licenses for "personal communication
services," or PCS, networks. The auction paved the way for an explosion
of mobile communications devices combining voice communication, paging,
and computing power. Most of the radio spectrum set aside for cellular phone
businesses was already allotted by 1993, and the PCS auction promised to
open up new territory for communications.
1991 Armenia declares its independence from the
Soviet Union 1990 Saddam says he will destroy
Israel.1978 100'000 cheering Egyptians welcome
Sadat home from Camp David summit.

^
1976 Presidential candidate Carter wins debate
Presidential candidates know that the
nation's fiscal health is crucial to winning  or losing 
elections. That issue takes center stage, as President Gerald Ford
and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter engage in a debate that revolves
mainly around economic issues. Ford and Carter wrangle over the relative
merits of tax cuts and whether or not the country is headed toward
increased inflation. In his gentle Southern manner, Carter chided
Ford for neglecting the economy, which had continued to wallow in
the funk that had begun in the late sixties. The president, meanwhile,
dismissed Carter as a soft-headed liberal whose tight-fisted proposals
revealed his naivete about managing America's money. The Georgia governor,
however, turned his inexperience into a virtue, eventually winning
the election by positioning himself as an outsider, untainted by Watergate
and the ineffectiveness of the current administration.

^
1973 Peron elected Argentina's President again
After his triumphant return from an
eighteen-year exile in Spain, former dictator Juan Domingo Peron is
elected president of Argentina in a landslide victory, with his third
wife, "Isabelita," elected as vice president.
In 1946, Peron, who led a military coup in 1943, was elected president
of Argentina by a huge majority. The year before, Peron was imprisoned
after declaring himself a presidential candidate, but mass demonstrations
by Argentine workers and public appeals from his charismatic wife,
Eva Duarte de Peron, forced his release. After becoming president,
Peron constructed an impressive populist political alliance that included
workers, the military, clerics, nationalists, and industrialists.
Peron's vision of self-sufficiency for his country won wide support
from the Argentine people, but over the next decade, he became increasingly
authoritarian, jailing political opponents, restricting freedom of
the press, and organizing trade unions into militant groups along
Fascist lines. In 1952, the president's
greatest political resource, "Evita" Peron, died, and Peron's unusual
social coalition collapsed, leading to a military coup in September
of 1955 that forced him to flee the country. However, his economic
reforms remained popular with the majority of Argentineans long after
his departure, and in 1973 he returned to Argentina, called back by
the military to end factional violence. Peron subsequently won another
overwhelming electoral victory, and his second wife, Isabel de Martinez
Peron, was elected as vice president. After his sudden death in the
following year, Isabelita succeeded him, becoming the Western Hemisphere's
first female head of government.

1973 Largest known prime, 2 ^ 132,049-1, is discovered
^1969 Vietnam: Antiwar activists
on trial in Chicago
The trial for the Chicago Eight charged with the responsibility for the
violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention
opens in Chicago. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National
Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders
of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers;
and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.
The group was charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to
incite a riot. All but Seale were represented by attorneys William Kunstler
and Leonard Weinglass. The trial, presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman,
turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court
as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racisim, and oppression. Their tactics
were so disruptive that at one point, Judge Hoffman ordered Seale gagged
and strapped to his chair. When the
trial ended in February 1970, Hoffman found the defendants and their attorneys
guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms between
two to four years. Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy,
the jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot. The
others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5000. However, none
served time because in 1972, a Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions
and eventually most of the contempt charges were dropped as well. 1967
Soviets sign a pact to send more aid to Hanoi.

1964
The Paris Opera House unveiled a stunning new ceiling painted as a gift
by Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, who spent much of his life in France.
His Russian soul and Jewish heritage stirred a love for folklore and biblical
themes. Much like Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, Chagall continued to work
vigorously until his death at the age of ninety-seven..  MORE
ON CHAGALL AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER
with links to images.

1954 East German police arrest 400 citizens as US spies.

1952 Vice~Presidential candidate Senator Richard
M. Nixon responds to a sensational headline which had appeared in The
New York Post stating, "Secret Rich Men's Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in
Style Far Beyond His Salary." by making his 'Checkers
Speech.' on TV and radio, famous for this passage: ...One other
thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they will probably
be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election.
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two
youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day before
we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore,
saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what
it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent
all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia,
the six year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids,
loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of
what they say about it, we are going to keep it....

^
1949 Truman: Soviets have exploded a nuclear device.
In a surprisingly low-key and carefully
worded statement, President Harry S. Truman informs the American people
that the Soviets have exploded a nuclear bomb. The Soviet accomplishment,
years ahead of what was thought possible by most US officials, caused
a panic in the American government.
The United States developed the atomic bomb during the latter stages
of World War II and dropped two bombs on Japan in August 1945. By
the time of the bombings in Japan, relations between the United States
and the Soviet Union were already crumbling. Many US officials, including
President Truman, came to see America's atomic monopoly as a valuable
asset in the developing Cold War with Russia. Most US officials, and
even the majority of scientists in the United States, believed that
it would be many years before the Soviets could develop an atomic
bomb of their own, and by that time the United States would have achieved
a vast numeric superiority.
On 03 September 1949, however, US scientists recorded seismic activity
from inside the Soviet Union that was unmistakably the result of an
underground nuclear test. Truman, informed of this development, at
first refused to believe it. He ordered his scientific and military
advisers to recheck their data. Once they confirmed the results, however,
Truman had to face the fact that America's nuclear monopoly was gone.
He also had to face the task of informing the American people, for
the news was sure to leak. On
23 September, Truman issues a brief statement to the media. "We have
evidence," the statement read, "within recent weeks an atomic explosion
occurred in the USSR." The president attempts to downplay the seriousness
of the event by noting that "The eventual development of this new
force by other nations was to be expected. This probability has always
been taken into account by us."
What had not been taken into account by the US government was the
fact that the Soviets, like the Americans, had captured many German
scientists after World War II who had been working on nuclear development.
In addition, the United States was unaware of the scope of Soviet
spy efforts to gain valuable information. Years ahead of what Americans
thought possible, the Soviets had exploded a nuclear device. Truman
reacted by requesting an intensive re-evaluation of America's Cold
War policies by the National Security Council. The report, issued
to the president in early 1950, called for massive increases in military
spending and a dramatic acceleration in the program to develop the
next stage of nuclear weaponry  the hydrogen bomb.

^
1943 Mussolini becomes Hitler's puppet dictator in occupied northern
Italy Benito
Mussolini, deposed dictator of Italy, fashions a new fascist republic—by
the leave of his new German masters—which he "rules" from his headquarters
in northern Italy. In July 1943,
after a Grand Council vote of "no confidence," Mussolini was thrust
from power and quickly placed under house arrest. The Italian masses,
who had so enthusiastically embraced him for his promises of a new
Italian "empire," now despised him for the humiliating defeat they
had suffered during the war.
But Mussolini still had one fan—Adolf Hitler. Gen. Pietro Badoglio,
who had assumed authority in Mussolini's absence, knew there might
be an attempt to break the former Duce out of his confinement, and
so moved him to a hotel in the Apennine Mountains. Despite the presence
of an entire army of armed police, German commandos in a bold move
swept onto an Apennine mountain peak from the air, overran the hotel,
and flew Mussolini to Hitler's headquarters on the Russian front.
Mussolini could not sit still
long and wanted to return to Italy to reassume power. But his German
"patrons" had no intention of allowing him, whom they regarded as
incompetent, to return to the scene of the disaster. So in order to
pacify—and control—him, he was set up in a German-controlled area
of northern Italy, Gargnano, on Lake Garda.
Mussolini set about creating a reformed version of fascism, one that
supposedly had learned from past mistakes and included elections and
a free press. His "Verona Manifesto" was the blueprint for this new
fascist republic—the Republic of Salo  where his government
departments had fled in light of the Italian surrender to the Allies.
Of course, there were never any elections
in the new fascist republic, and no freedom of anything. Salo was
little more than a police state clogged with aging Black Shirts 
corrupt, viscous, and delusional. And Mussolini, geographically removed
from Salo, ensconced at Lake Garda as he was, controlled nothing.
He was little more than a puppet of the Germans, spewing anti-Allied
propaganda and avenging himself and his masters on traitors to the
party by ordering the executions of former Grand Council members—including
his own son-in-law, Count Ciano. Eventually, the Allied advance into
northern Italy, and the brave guerilla warfare waged by the Italian
partisans, spelled the end of Salo—and its paper ruler.

1932 Kingdom of Hejaz & Nejd renamed Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia 1883 Robert B. Taney begins his term as
the US's twelfth secretary of the Treasury.

^
1875 Kid's arrest for a friend's prank starts him on a life of crime.
15-year-old Billy the Kid is arrested
for the first time. An older acquaintance of Billy's had stolen a
bag of clothes from a Chinese laundryman as a joke and convinced the
always affable Billy to hide it for him. When Billy was literally
caught holding the bag, a Silver City policeman threw him in the local
jail to teach him a lesson. Languishing in a cramped cell for this
petty offense, Billy discovered a deep-seated terror of confinement.
After enduring his imprisonment for two days, he took advantage of
his diminutive frame to worm his way up a chimney and escape.
From that day forward Billy would be
on the wrong side of the law, though he would soon be guilty of crimes
far more serious than hiding a stolen bag of laundry. Born in New
York City in either 1859 or 1860, the boy who would later achieve
an almost inexplicable level of worldwide fame as Billy the Kid, was
at various times known as Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William
Bonney, reflecting the uncertain identity of his real father. The
young Billy's home life was equally uncertain and perhaps even abusive,
and he had a rootless childhood that took him to Indiana, Kansas,
and finally Silver City, New Mexico, where his mother settled down
and ran a boarding house. Although she was plagued by tuberculosis,
Billy's mother, Catherine, was reportedly "a jolly Irish lady, full
of life and mischief." She died when Billy was just 14, leaving the
boy to eke out a meager existence on his own.
Unquestionably, Billy's childhood was a hard and difficult one, but
no more so than that of thousands of other young orphans. For a time
the boy even seemed to be headed for an unremarkable life as a hard-working,
honest, and unusually friendly young man. The owner of a hotel where
Billy worked for his room and board later even praised his young employee
as "the only kid who ever worked here who never stole anything." Only
after his unjust arrest and imprisonment for hiding a bag of dirty
laundry did the good-natured and hardworking William Bonney start
down the road to becoming the ruthless murdering outlaw Billy the
Kid.

^
1862 Lev Nikolayevich graf Tolstoy,
34, marries teenager.
Count Leo Tolstoy married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs. Tolstoy is nearly
twice the age of his teenage bride. After losing his parents as a
child, Tolstoy inherited a large estate and was raised by relatives.
He began studies at Kazan University at age 16 but was disappointed
in the quality of education and returned to his estate in 1847 without
a degree. He proceeded to live a wild and dissolute life in Moscow
and St. Petersburg for the next four years. In 1851, he joined the
army and fought in the Crimean war.
He wrote about his wartime experiences in the successful Sebastapol
Sketches, published in 1855. He also wrote several other autobiographical
works while in the army. In 1857, Tolstoy visited Europe and became
interested in education. He started a school for peasant children
on his estate and studied progressive educational techniques.
The year after his marriage, he published
his first successful novel, The Cossacks. Tolstoy and his
wife proceeded to have 13 children over the next 17 years. Tolstoy
was constantly engaged in a spiritual struggle between his responsibilities
as a wealthy landlord and his desire to renounce his property altogether.
Some of his inner turmoil appeared
in his great masterpieces War
and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna
Karenina (1875-1877). Later in his life, he tried to give
away the rights to his works, but his wife gained control of the copyrights
for all his work published before 1880. Tolstoy became increasingly
radical, embraced anarchism, and was excommunicated from the Russian
Orthodox Church. In 1910, he fled his home secretly with his youngest
daughter but caught pneumonia and died at a remote railway station
a few days later, on 20 November 1910.
Né le 09 septembre (Grégorien) 1828 dans une riche et
noble famille russe, il se préoccupe du sort des paysans pauvres.
Après avoir participé à la Guerre de Crimée (1854-1856),
il abandonne famille et richesse pour vivre avec les paysans. Son
roman le plus célèbre est Guerre et Paix.War
and Peace (1865-69) contains three kinds of material
 a historical account of the Napoleonic wars, the biographies
of fictional characters, and a set of essays about the philosophy
of history. The work's historical
portions narrate the campaign of 1805 leading to Napoleon's victory
at the Battle of Austerlitz, a period of peace, and Napoleon's invasion
of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy portrays Napoleon as an ineffective, egomaniacal
buffoon, Tsar Alexander I as a phrasemaker obsessed with how historians
will describe him, and the Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov as a patient
old man who understands the limitations of human will and planning.
Particularly noteworthy are the novel's battle scenes, which show
combat as sheer chaos. Among
the book's fictional characters, the reader's attention is first focused
on Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud man who has come to despise everything
fake, shallow, or merely conventional. He joins the army to achieve
glory. Badly wounded at Austerlitz, he comes to see glory and Napoleon
as no less petty than the salons of St. Petersburg. Prince Andrey
repeatedly discovers the emptiness of the activities to which he has
devoted himself. Tolstoy's description of his death in 1812 is usually
regarded as one of the most effective scenes in Russian literature.
The novel's other hero, the bumbling
and sincere Pierre Bezukhov, oscillates between belief in some philosophical
system promising to resolve all questions and a relativism so total
as to leave him in apathetic despair. He at last discovers the Tolstoyan
truth that wisdom is to be found not in systems but in the ordinary
processes of daily life, especially in his marriage to the novel's
most memorable heroine, Natasha. When the book stops Pierre seems
to be forgetting this lesson in his enthusiasm for a new utopian plan.
The book's truly wise characters are
not its intellectuals but a simple, decent soldier, Natasha's brother
Nikolay, and a generous pious woman, Andrey's sister Marya. Their
marriage symbolizes the novel's central prosaic values.
The essays in War and Peace, which begin in the second half
of the book, satirize all attempts to formulate general laws of history
and reject the ill-considered assumptions supporting all historical
narratives. In Tolstoy's view, history, like battle, is essentially
the product of contingency, has no direction, and fits no pattern.
The causes of historical events are infinitely varied and forever
unknowable, and so historical writing, which claims to explain the
past, necessarily falsifies it. According to Tolstoy's essays, history
is made by the sum total of an infinite number of small decisions
taken by ordinary people, whose actions are too unremarkable to be
documented. Therefore Tolstoy's novel gives its readers countless
examples of small incidents that each exert a tiny influence 
which is one reason that War and Peace is so long. In
Anna
Karenina (1875-77) Tolstoy applied these ideas to
family life. The novel's first sentence, which indicates its concern
with the domestic, is perhaps Tolstoy's most famous: "All happy families
resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Anna Karenina interweaves the stories of three families, the Oblonskys,
the Karenins, and the Levins. The novel begins at the Oblonskys, where
the long-suffering wife Dolly has discovered the infidelity of her
genial and sybaritic husband Stiva. In her kindness, care for her
family, and concern for everyday life, Dolly stands as the novel's
moral compass. By contrast, Stiva, though never wishing ill, wastes
resources, neglects his family, and regards pleasure as the purpose
of life. The figure of Stiva is perhaps designed to suggest that evil,
no less than good, ultimately derives from the small moral choices
human beings make moment by moment. Stiva's sister Anna begins the
novel as the faithful wife of the stiff, unromantic, but otherwise
decent government minister Aleksey Karenin and the mother of a young
boy, Seryozha. But Anna, who imagines herself the heroine of a romantic
novel, allows herself to fall in love with an officer, Aleksey Vronsky.
Schooling herself to see only the worst in her husband, she eventually
leaves him and her son to live with Vronsky. Throughout the novel,
Tolstoy indicates that the romantic idea of love, which most people
identify with love itself, is entirely incompatible with the superior
kind of love, the intimate love of good families. As the novel progresses,
Anna, who suffers pangs of conscience for abandoning her husband and
child, develops a habit of lying to herself until she reaches a state
of near madness and total separation from reality. She at last commits
suicide by throwing herself under a train. The realization that she
may have been thinking about life incorrectly comes to her only when
she is lying on the track, and it is too late to save herself. The
third story concerns Dolly's sister Kitty, who first imagines she
loves Vronsky but then recognizes that real love is the intimate feeling
she has for her family's old friend, Konstantin Levin. Their story
focuses on courtship, marriage, and the ordinary incidents of family
life, which, in spite of many difficulties, shape real happiness and
a meaningful existence. Throughout the novel, Levin is tormented by
philosophical questions about the meaning of life in the face of death.
Although these questions are never answered, they vanish when Levin
begins to live correctly by devoting himself to his family and to
daily work. Like his creator Tolstoy, Levin regards the systems of
intellectuals as spurious and as incapable of embracing life's complexity.
Upon completing Anna Karenina,
Tolstoy fell into a profound state of existential despair, which he
describes in his Ispoved (1884; A Confession).
The Kreutzer Sonata (1891) is a dark novella about a
man who murders his wife.Smert
Ivana Ilicha (written 1886; The
Death of Ivan Ilych) is a novella describing a man's
gradual realization that he is dying and that his life has been wasted
on trivialities.Otets Sergy
(written 1898; Father
Sergius), which may be taken as Tolstoy's self-critique,
tells the story of a proud man who wants to become a saint but discovers
that sainthood cannot be consciously sought. Regarded as a great holy
man, Sergius comes to realize that his reputation is groundless; warned
by a dream, he escapes incognito to seek out a simple and decent woman
whom he had known as a child. At last he learns that not he but she
is the saint, that sainthood cannot be achieved by imitating a model,
and that true saints are ordinary people unaware of their own prosaic
goodness. This story therefore seems to criticize the ideas Tolstoy
espoused after his conversion from the perspective of his earlier
great novels. In 1899 Tolstoy
published his third long novel, Voskreseniye (Resurrection).
The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself
on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha
Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her
life of crime. After she is condemned to imprisonment in Siberia,
he decides to follow her and, if she will agree, to marry her. In
the novel's most remarkable exchange, she reproaches him for his hypocrisy:
once you got your pleasure from me, and now you want to get your salvation
from me, she tells him. She refuses to marry him, but, as the novel
ends, Nekhlyudov achieves spiritual awakening when he at last understands
Tolstoyan truths, especially the futility of judging others. The novel's
most celebrated sections satirize the church and the justice system,
but the work is generally regarded as markedly inferior to War
and Peace and Anna Karenina. The
novella Hadji
Murad (1904) is a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus.

1862 Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
is published in Northern Newspapers

^
1846 Neptune is discovered.
German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle [09 Jun 1812 – 10 Jul
1910] discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory. Neptune,
the eighth planet from the sun, was postulated by the French astronomer
Urbain
Le Verrier [11 Mar 1811 – 23 Sep 1877] who calculated the
approximate location of the planet by studying gravity-induced disturbances
in the motions of the planets, particularly Uranus. A few days after
Leverrier announced his findings, after only an hour of searching,
Galle (helped by student Heinrich Louis d'Arrest) finds Neptune within
one degree of the position that had been computed by Le Verrier. Leverrier
would die 31 years later on this very same date. 3 years before Le
Verrier, John
Couch Adams [05 Jun 1819 – 21 Jan 1892] had become the first
person to predict the position of a planet beyond Uranus, but this
was not published.

^
1806 Lewis and Clark return
American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned to
St. Louis, Missouri, from the first overland journey across North
America to the Pacific Coast. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had set
off over two years before to explore the territory of the Louisiana
Purchase. Even before the US government had concluded purchase negotiations
with France, US President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether
Lewis, his private secretary, and William Clark, an Army captain,
to lead an expedition into what is now the US Northwest.
On 14 May 1804, the "Corps of Discovery," featuring twenty-eight men
and one woman, a Native American named Sacajawea, left St. Louis for
the American interior. The expedition traveled up the Missouri River
in six canoes and two longboats, and wintered in Dakota before crossing
into Montana where they first saw the Rocky Mountains. On the other
side of the Continental Divide, they were met by Sacajawea's tribe,
the Shoshone Indians, who sold them horses for their journey down
through the Bitterroot Mountains. After passing through the dangerous
rapids of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in canoes, the explorers
reached the calm of the Columbia River, which led them to the sea.
On 08 November 1805, the expedition
reached the Pacific Ocean, the first European explorers to do so by
an overland route from the East. After pausing there for winter, the
explorers began their long journey back to St. Louis. On 23 September
1806, after two-and-a-half years, the expedition returned to the city,
bringing back a wealth of information about the largely unexplored
region, as well as valuable US claims to Oregon Territory. Future
president Theodore Roosevelt later wrote that the Lewis and Clark
Expedition "opened the door into the heart of the Far West."

1805 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike pays $2000 to buy from the
Sioux a 23-square-kilometer tract at the mouth of the Minnesota River that
will be used to establish a military post, Fort Snelling.

^
1803 Battle of Assaye
Arthur Wellesley leads British and Indian forces to victory over the
Sindhia of Gwalior's army at Assaye, India, in the second major attempt
by the British to extend their colonial influence into the area occupied
by the Mahrattas. A cautious and brilliant military commander, the
Irish-born Wellesley returned to Europe to fight in the Peninsular
War, never losing a battle as he decisively ridded Spain and Portugal
of French occupation. After he was bestowed the title of duke of Wellington
by a grateful England, Wellesley achieved his most stunning victory
at the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoléon Bonaparte suffered
his final defeat.

1795 A national plebiscite approves the new French constitution,
but so many voters abstain that the results are suspect. Napoléon
takes charge.1788 Louis XVI of France declares the
Parliament restored.1780 British Major John André
is apprehended as a Spy, near Tarrytown, NY

^
1779 John Paul Jones victorious after he begins to fight
During the US War of Independence,
US Commodore John Paul Jones, aboard the Bonhomme Richard,
begins a hard-fought engagement against the British man-of-war Serapis
off Flamborough Head in the North Sea. After inflicting considerable
damage to the US vessel, British Captain Richard Pearson asked Jones
if he had struck his colors, the naval sign indicating surrender.
From his disabled ship, Jones replied "I have not yet begun to fight,"
and after three more hours of furious fighting, Pearson surrendered
to him. After the victory, the US sailors transferred to the Serapis
from the Bonhomme Richard, which sunk the following day.

1739 The Austrians sign the Treaty of Belgrade after having
lost the city to the Turks.1667Shikotsu
volcano erupts, in Japan. 1667 In Williamsburg,
Virginia, a law is passed, barring slaves from obtaining their freedom by
converting to Christianity.1595 Led by Fray Juan
de Silva, the Spanish begin an intensive missionary campaign in the North-American
southeast. In the following two years, 1500 Amerindians in the area of Florida,
Georgia, and South Carolina convert to the Catholic faith.1577
William of Orange makes his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.1561 Philip II of Spain gives orders to halt colonizing
efforts in Florida.1553 The Sadians defeat the last
of their enemies and establish themselves as rulers of Morocco.

^
1413 Trial of Sir John Oldcastle begins Accused
of maintaining both Lollard preachers and their opinions, Sir John
Oldcastle [1378 – 14 Dec 1417] is brought to trial before
Archbishop Thomas Arundel [1353 – 19 Feb 1414] of Canterbury.
Oldcastle would be convicted but would escape and only be caught 4
years later and executed by hanging over a fire. He was a friend of
King Henry V [16 Sep 1387 – 31 Aug 1422] and inspired 16th-century
English dramatic characters, including the Falstaff of Shakespeare
[bap. 26 Apr 1564 – 23 Apr 1616]. The Lollards (“mumblers”
in Dutch) were a heretical English sect started about 1382 based on
a simplified version of the teachings of John Wycliffe [1330 –
31 Dec 1384].

1186 The world is not ravaged, with only a few people surviving,
which was the prediction of the Letter of Toledo of John of Toledo,
based on his calculation that a major planetary alignment would occur in
Libra on this date.1122 Concordat of Worms between
Pope Callistus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. It settles the Investiture
Controversy over who had the right  bishop or emperor  to choose
replacement clergy for vacant positions. Henry V renounces investiture of
ring and crozier; promises freedom of election of clergy; promises to restore
church property.

2006 At least 37 Shi'ites, by a Sunni terrorist bomb which
ignites a kerosene truck next to a queue, mostly of women, waiting to buy
cooking fuel in Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq. Some 40 are injured. —(060923)2005 David Romero, 47, after being struck on the motorcycle
he was riding as a California highway policeman, by a drunken driver at
a red light in City of Industry. —(060807)2005 A woman,
82, from dehydration, near Cleveland, Texas, 70 km NE of Houston. She is
in a car in the disorganized congested traffic fleeing from hurricane
Rita, in temperatures that reach 36ºC, while car air conditioners
are switched off to conserve gasoline, adequate supplies of which have failed
to be provided along the evacuation route.2005 Twenty-four
persons, as their bus catches fire from an overheated brake, near
Wilmer, 25 km south of downtown Dallas, Texas, on Interstate Highway 45,
jammed with traffic fleeing the approaching hurricane Rita, at 07:00 (12:00
UT). The dead are among some 38 persons, aged 78 to 101, whom the bus was
exacuating to Dallas from the Brighton Gardens assisted living center in
the Houston suburb Bellaire, together with 6 staff members, and the driver
of the bus. Some of the old persons have oxigen canisters, which explode,
aggravating the fire. — (050924)2005 As'ad Rian and at
least 19 Palestinians, after a pickup truck carrying masked Islamic
militants and homemade rockets explodes at a Hamas rally in the Jebalya
refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Some 80 persons are wounded. As'ad Rian
was the brother of Nizar Rian, a senior member of the Hamas political wing.
— (050923)2004 Nigel Nicolson, English author
and publisher, Conservative member of Parliament (1952-1959), born on 19
January 1917, son of Harold Nicolson [21 Nov 1886 – 01 May 1968] and
Vita Sackville-West [09 Mar 1892 – 02 Jun 1962], about whom he wrote
Portrait of a Marriage (1973), based on his mother's unpublished
journal. He also published his own journal Long Life (1998).2004 A Palestinian girl, 10, of bullet wounds suffered
on 07 September while she was sitting in her classroom, as Israeli troops
outside fired carelessly in a fight with Palestinian militants.. 2004
Israeli 22-year-old Capt. Tal Bardugo, 22; 1st Sgt. Yisrael Lutati, 20;
and 1st Sgt. Nir Sami, 21; and the three Palestinian gunmen who,
in the dawn fog, penetrate and attack the military outpost guarding the
enclave settlement Morag in the Gaza Strip. The 3 Israelis and 2 of the
Palestinians die in a 06:00-06:45 gunfight, in which another Israeli soldier
is critically wounded. The third gunman escapes and is killed later after
firing at 09:00 at journalists, wounding in the thigh Itzik Saban, reporter
from the Yediot Ahronot daily.The gunmen were one each from Islamic
Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committee, and the Ahmed Abu El-Rish Brigades.2003 Ali Khalaf Mohammed, 45; Salem Khalil Ismael; and Sadi Fakhri
Faiyadh; of a peaceful family of 15, who were sleeping in their
home and on the roof, in al-Sajr village, 15 km north of Fallujah, Iraq,
when the house was shot at for 15 minutes by US troops and then hit by a
dozen bombs or missiles from US warplanes at 02:10. Three persons are injured:
Abed Rashid, 50; and two sons of Mohammed: Hussein, 11, and Tahseen, 9.
The US troops claim that they were fired upon (without suffering any injuries)
by attackers who then ran into the house, that they killed one of the attackers,
and that they know of no other deaths. Reporters who later go to the scene
find no spent shell casings or other evidence that weapons were fired from
the home.2002:: 21 of the 1500 students at Middle School
#2 in Fengzhen, Inner Mongolia, China. In the three-story school,
which opened in 2001, students, the school day ended, were going down a
stairwell where the lights were not working. Suddenly the guardrail on the
first floor stairs collapsed, then the stairs tilted. Some of the students
fell down, but students behind could not see what happened and continued
to press forward, falling on top of, crushing, and smothering students ahead
of them, while some fell 3 to 4 meters to the ground floor. 47 students
are injured. 2002 Cardinal John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung,
in Hongkong. He was born on 26.March 1925 in Shui-tsai (Kaying diocese).
He was ordained a priest on 06 July 1952. He was named Bishop of Hongkong
on 05 April 1975 and consecrated bishop on 25 July 1975. Pope John Paul
II named him a cardinal on 28 June 1988.

^
2002 Eduard Yefimovich Gufeld, 2 weeks after a stroke,
chess grandmaster and chess writer.
Gufeld, born in Kiev on 19 March 1936, coached many Russian players,
including the former women's world champion Maya Chiburdanidze. He
lived in Los Angeles since 1995.
By the standards of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gufeld was only a moderately
successful chess player. His best finish in the Soviet Championship
was a tie for seventh place in 1963. Still, Mr. Gufeld was among the
few Soviet grandmasters allowed to travel freely outside the Soviet
Union in the 1970's and 1980's.
He wrote more than 80 books, including an autobiography, My Life
in Chess (1994). He sacrificed quality for quantity, reusing
material from book to book.
He became a grandmaster in 1967. In the 70's and 80's, he trained
the Soviet teams that dominated the Chess Olympiads.
Gufeld said: For me, chess is life, and every game is like a
new life. Every chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime.

^2000 Khin Khoeun, murdered and his liver eaten
by Heang Hun. In Cambodia's Kompong
Thom province, former Khmer Rouge soldier Heang Hun invites his friend
Khin Khoeun to drink whisky at his house. While drinking, they have
a small argument, Heang Hun takes out a gun and shoost Khin Khoeun
four times. Then Heang Hun orders neighboring children to drag Khin
Khoeun downstairs. When the body is on the ground, Heang Hun takes
a very sharp knife to cut the body and remove the liver to fry. He
eats the fried liver with wine. Heang
Hun flees to the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anglong Veng, where
police eventually apprehend him. On
7 June 2001 a provincial court sentences Heang Hun to 18 years in
prison and to pay two million riel ($526) to the victim's family.

^1965 Vietnam: 3 accused Viet Cong agents, executed in secret
The South Vietnamese government executes
three accused Viet Cong agents held at Da Nang. They did it at night
to prevent foreign photographers from recording it, but nevertheless,
the story got out. Three days later, a clandestine Viet Cong radio
station announced North Vietnam’s execution of two US soldiers held
captive since 1963, as “war criminals.”

1946 Angel Zárraga, Mexican painter born on 16 August
1886.  MORE
ON ZÁRRAGA AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER
with links to images.1945 The first US citizen dies in Vietnam
conflict, during the fall of Saigon to French forces.

1930 Emilie Preyer, German artist born on 06 June 1849.1919 Ernst
Heinrich Bruns, German mathematician and astronomer born on
04 September 1848.

^
1906 More Blacks killed as Atlanta
race riot ends on its second day.RIOTING
GOES ON, DESPITE TROOPS Negro Lynched, Another Shot, in Atlanta
SATURDAY'S DEAD ELEVEN
Exodus of Black Servants Troubles City.
MAYOR BLAMES NEGROESLeading
Citizens Condemn the Rioters and Demand Cessation of Race Agitation.
Many Injured.Full
text of The New York Times article, the next morning
which follows the above headline.

1898 Richard Malcolm Johnston, author. JOHNSTON ONLINE:
Autobiography
of Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston1897 Stephen Kempton,
9, the first automobile fatality in Great Britain. He had been trying to
steal a ride from a taxi by hanging on to a spring, but lost his grip and
was trapped underneath the wheel of the vehicle. The tragedy occurred on
Stockmar Road near Hackney, a full two years before America's first traffic
fatality.

^1889 William Wilkie Collins, 65, the
often imitated first English master of the mystery story.
Son of William Collins (1788-1847), the landscape painter, his first
published work was Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq.,
R.A. (1848). His fiction includes Antonina; or, the Fall
of Rome (1850), Basil (1852, a highly colored tale of seduction
and vengeance with a contemporary middle-class setting and passages
of uncompromising realism), The Woman in White (1860), No
Name (1862), Armadale
(1866), The
Moonstone (1868, concerning a cursed jewel that was originally
stolen from an idol's eye).
COLLINS ONLINE:

1885 Karl Spitzweg, Munich German painter born on 05 February
1808.  Mehr über Spitzberg an der kunst für September.  MORE
ON SPITZWEG AT ART 4 FEBRUARY
with links to images.1877 Urbain
J.J. Le Verrier, mathematician, astronomer, codiscoverer of
Neptune1873 George Willem Opdenhoff, Dutch artist
born on 07 July 1807. 1865 John Frederick Herring,
British painter specialized in animals, born in 1795.  MORE
ON HERRING AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER with links to images.1852 John Vanderlyn,
US Neoclassical painter, specialized in History Painting, born on 15 October
1775.  MORE
ON VANDERLYN AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER with links to images.1831 Jean Charles Nicaise
Perrin, French artist born in 1754. 1828 Richard
Parkes Bonington, of tuberculosis, in London, English Romantic
painter specialized in coastal landscapes,
born on 25 October 1801.  MORE
ON BONINGTON AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER
with links to images.1804 Thomas James, author.
THOMAS JAMES ONLINE: Three
Years Among the Indians and Mexicans1766 John Brown,
editor of The
Psalms of David in Metre1763 Hendrik F. van Lint,
Flemish artist born on 26 January 1684.1676 Claes Jansz van
der Willigen, Dutch artist born in 1630.1657 Joachim
Jungius, in Hamburg, German mathematician, natural scientist,
and philosopher of science, born on 22 October 1587. Author of Logica
Hamburgensis (1638).1571 John Jewel, English
church reformer.0704 Saint Adamnan, author. ADAMNAN
ONLINE: Life
of St. Columba (Latin original and English translation)

2004
Tamara Touirat, girl, whose father is Malik Bouanati, and whose
mother, Ouarda Touirat, 32, became infertile after she underwent chemotherapy
due to Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1997, but after part of her ovaries had been
excised and preserved in liquid nitrogen; they were reimplanted in 2002.
The remaining part of her ovaries did start functioning again in 2000, but
the ovum that produced Tamara is believed to come from the reimplanted part.
[24 Sep 2004 photo >]2003 The Athlon 64 microprocessor
chip is introduced by Advanced Micro Devices.1915
Clifford G. Shull, physicist, improved techniques for exploring
the atomic structure of matter.1913 Carl Henning Pedersen,
Danish painter, draftsman, sculptor, and designer, who died in 1993. —
more1901
Jaroslav Seifert [Literature Nobel  1984] 1900
David
van Dantzig, Dutch mathematician who died on 22 July 1959.
He studied differential geometry, electromagnetism and thermodynamics. His
most important work was in topological algebra; he studied metrisation of
groups, rings and fields. After the WW II, he worked on probability and
statistics. 1897 Paul Delvaux, Belgian surrealist
painter who died on 20 July 1994.  MORE
ON DELVAUX AT ART 4 JULY with links to images.1895 La CGT. A Limoges,
s'ouvre le congrès constitutif et il va se clore le 28. Il fonde
la Confédération Générale du Travail. Sont presents
75 délégués (dont trois corsetières en grève),
qui représentent 28 fédérations, 18 bourses du travail
et 126 syndicats non fédérés et ce n'est qu'un début
... 1889 Walter Lippmann NYC, journalist/political
writer (Men of Destiny), one of the founders of The New Republic Magazine
in 1914. He wrote A Preface to Politics (1913, mildly socialistic),
Drift and Mastery (1914, anti-Marxist), The Good Society
(1937, repudiates socialism), Essays in the Public Philosophy (1955,
natural-law), Public Opinion (1922), The Phantom Public
(1925) He died on 14 December 1974.1888 Gerhard Kittel,
German Lutheran Bible scholar. He was first editor of a 10-volume Greek
lexicon which took 43 years to complete (1933-76). In its English edition
(1964-76), the work is entitled, "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament"
 or "TDNT" for short.

^
1884 Adding machine patented by Hollerith
Herman Hollerith takes out his first patent for "improvements in the
art of compiling statistics." Hollerith worked as a statistician for
the United States census of 1880, where he found a pressing need for
automated data processing. He developed a mechanical adding machine,
which was used in the 1890 census. His machine, like many later computer
systems, used punch cards for data entry. After his machine won a
competition for the most efficient data processing equipment to be
used in the 1890 census, he established his own company, which merged
with two others in 1924 to become IBM.